Chickpea Chips – VeganMoFo Day 8

Today’s VeganMoFo prompt is about Food Flops. Taking inspiration from things you’ve made that didn’t turn out so well. I actually have a post about my own flops, but this won’t be about any of them, instead about last year’s Polenta Chips. Now, there’s actually no flop in that recipe, because it’s nice and tasty…but along the way, I realised that my body isn’t actually a huge fan of polenta, so I can’t eat them anymore! But they were nice, so I wanted to find something similar. Enter…chickpea chips!

Chickpea chips are made in a similar way to polenta chips, only with gram/chickpea flour instead of polenta/cornmeal! You can get something similar under the name of “panisse” in France, but those are fried and I baked these for ease.

You have to make the mixture of these in advance – it’s done by mixing a chickpea flour & water combination on the stove until thickened, and then pressing it into a tray, and leaving to cool. This forms a block, much like polenta, which you then cut into chips and bake.

Chickpea Chips

• Servings: 1 tray
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Ingredients

• 250g chickpea flour, sifted
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp stock powder
• 500ml cold water

to bake

• salt and pepper, to season
• spray oil

Directions

1. Mix your sifted chickpea flour with the salt and stock powder. Slowly pour in the water, mixing constantly, until thouroughly mixed (as lump free as you can get it!)
2. Pour the chickpea flour mixture into a large saucepan on low heat, and whisk continually for 5 minutes until very thick.
3. Turn out the mixture onto a lined baking tray, and spread until about half an inch thick. Leave to fully cool.
4. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F
5. Turn the cooled mixture out onto a chopping board, and cut into “chips” – you can be creative if you like but make them similar sizes so they cook evenly!
6. Place chips on a baking tray, season with salt and pepper, and spray with oil.
7. Put them in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown.
8. Serve immediately.

Curried Chickpea Flour Scramble

Happy New Year, everyone! Christmas is over, holidays are over, and we’re left with…January. Here, January is wet and grey and cold. Social media is full of people talking about diets, cleanses, and all that stuff – eating lots of salads and fresh produce. Now…if you’re into that, it’s fine. But it’s cold, it’s miserable, who wants to eat a salad? You need good warming food!

January is also the month of all things new. A new year – yes, 2017 already! Veganuary is pretty big, with over fifty thousand people pledging to go vegan this month. And VeganMoFo has a new MiniMoFo challenge for this month!  They’ll be releasing monthly themed challenges throughout the year, with this month’s theme being to Try something New.

If you’re a regular of my blog (if not, hi and welcome!) you’ll know that chickpea flour isn’t really new to me. I’ve made pancakes and fritters with it for past VeganMoFos, but this is the first time I’ve ever scrambled it! The idea came a week or two ago, when we wanted a fry-up (complete with vegan bacon, hash browns, roasted tomatoes…) but had no tofu to make tofu scramble. I’d vaguely seen chickpea flour being used as a scramble before – and I knew it set up nicely when making pancakes and fritters – so…why not? And it worked.

For this version though, I wanted to add flavour to it and make it stand on its own. To brighten up the January coldness, I made it into a curried scramble. Complete with vegetables and spices, this makes a lovely meal on its own, or served (as I did) with vegan sausages, or even split into more portions as part of a cooked breakfast.

Vegetable wise, I used peas, cauliflower, and tomatoes, which lend themselves well to curry flavours, but you could use whatever vegetables you fancy, just make sure they’re cooked or at least blanched before you add them to the pan.

The first step is to fry off onion and garlic until cooked in a pan, then add the vegetables. This cooks for about five minutes, while you make the batter – which is just chickpea flour, spices, and cold water, whisked together until smooth. Then, you pour this batter over the vegetables in the pan, and leave it till it starts to set around the edges.

The next part is the fun part, scrambling! I use a spatula for this as it’s easiest, and just mix and mix. Break the batter up, let it cook a bit, and break it up again.

Keep scrambling for 5-10 minutes, until the scramble is not liquidy anymore and has broken into nice little bits of chickpea scramble! Taste it for seasoning, and finally, serve.

• Servings: 2 as a main, more as a side
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Ingredients

• 100g chickpea flour
• 1/2 tsp cumin powder
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp cayenne
• 1 tsp garam masalaa
• 200ml cold water
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• approx 700g cooked mixed vegetables (peas, cauliflower, tomatoes…), in bitesize chunks
• Salt & Pepper

Directions

1. Begin by frying the onion and garlic in the oil until translucent, about 5 minutes.
2. Add the vegetables into the onion and garlic, along with salt and pepper, stir, and cook for 5 more minutes.
3. Meanwhile, make your batter. Mix together the chickpea flour and spices, and slowly stir in the cold water, until a smooth batter forms.
4. Once the vegetables are cooked, pour over the chickpea batter.
5. Leave the pan alone until the batter starts to set at the edges – you should be able to see this happen.
6. Next, using a spatula, scramble the mixture! Stir, break the mix up, let cook for a few seconds, then stir again.
7. Keep scrambling for 5-10 minutes, until it has the consistency of a scramble, and is not liquid any more.
8. Serve immediately.